The present invention relates to a printing method for printing an image on an image receiving member such as cloth, paper and so on, and more particularly, to the printing method capable of easily printing any desired heat-sensitive transfer image formed on a transfer sheet onto the image receiving member by retransferring the image from the transfer sheet onto the receiving member. The present invention also relates to a print sheet making device in which the ink image is transferred to the transfer sheet.
Conventionally, in order to print images of characters and pictures on an image receiving member such as cloth, paper, wood, metal, plastic, ceramics and more particularly on wears and handkerchiefs, users may generally buy a ready-made print material such as a commercially produced applique to thermally print the image of the print material on the image receiving member by an iron, or the users may previously prepare a master plate to print the image on the receiving member by a screen printing method. Alternatively, users may ask for a speciality store to produce the print material. When user personally intends to print the characters and pictures those being not commercially produced on the material, printing process will become complicated, and printing cost will be extremely increased.
In order to resolve the above problem, a printing system using an electrostatic copying machine was proposed as described in Japanese Patent Application Kokai No. 60-230899. However, since the electrostatic copying machine used in this system is so remarkably expensive that users can not individually get this machine, users must go to the office or store in which this copy machine is set to make the print. In this connection, this system is not available for personal use.
Even if some user can easily use such copying machine, the thermal fixing process of this copying machine restricts the sheet on which a toner image is to be formed and fixed by this fixing process. For example, thermomelting type and thermosoftening type sheets will cause problems at the thermal fixing unit of the copy machine. These sheets will be softened or melted at a heating roller of the unit and adhered thereto or deformed by the pressure of the roller. Therefore the material of the sheet to be printed must be strictly selected.
In addition to the above problems, the copying machine always requires an original for printing the letters or picture images on the material to be printed. Particularly with respect to characters, required characters must be collected and rearranged in desired configuration by cutting and patching them for suitable layout, and the transferable image must be prepared by copying the arranged characters. This requires a complicated process.